


a ghost and a servant girl walk into a flower field

by cartoonmoomba



Series: I walked around the world until I found my gravestone [12]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: AU: for the greater good, Gen, OC writings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 10:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11125527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartoonmoomba/pseuds/cartoonmoomba
Summary: "I'm sorry," the girl with the red-bruised lips and dark eyes smiles. "The soul of one Lieal Fhey is no longer available."Lieal Fhey (servant girl, stubborn girl, and too kind for her own good) and Solette Vaifert (spoiled noble girl, mass murderer and too loving for her own good) and the journey when suddenly two souls share one body.





	1. january 13, 2016

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Final Fantasy XIV does not belong to me.
> 
> A collection of pieces I have done for backstory development between Lieal Fhey & Solette Vaifert (to ICly explain my desire to Fantasia, let's be real).
> 
> [Tumblr tag.](http://mog-throw.tumblr.com/tagged/au:-for-the-greater-good)

She dreams of Ishgard.

It is the Ishgard of summers past, before Meteor descended and covered the whole of Coerthas with a frozen blanket of snow. Flowers bloom under window sills, in window boxes and on the sides of the streets; there is birdsong in the air and the burbling of fountains attracts the laughter of children. She stands before a mansion, on a street, and the sun is blinding her eyes. The doors before her loom tall and crimson, and roses crawl up the masonry all along the building.

Someone calls her name. She turns. There is no one there.

She wakes.

.

.

The doors before her loom tall and crimson, and roses crawl up the masonry all along the building. It is not the Durendaire Mansion of her childhood, and it is not the Haillenarte flower gardens that teem with cultivated flora out front. She remembers that once, a long time ago, there was another family who was known for their flowers. The Flower Mansion in Coerthas; a summer house. She had been once, when she was small and Ettie barely any older. There is a heady aroma in the air - thick and sweet, almost pungent. It smells like roses.

Someone calls her name. She turns. She is expecting someone, she thinks.

She wakes.

.

.

The doors before her loom tall and crimson. The roses crawling up the masonry all along the building are decaying. There is a smell in the air, sweet and pungent. They are dying slowly and meticulously. _Someone has poisoned the earth,_ Lieal realizes. She looks down: she is standing on a field of dead earthworms. A breeze brushes against her cheeks and carries with it traces of ash that dusts her skin black.

Someone calls her name. She turns. She is expecting someone, she thinks, and she is afraid.

She wakes.

.

.

“The dead are trying to speak to you,” Master Cocobuki tells her in a nonchalant voice, stirring the cup of tea she has brought him.

“Is it my parents?”

“Does it feel like your parents?”

She is quiet for a long time.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t think I would be so frightened if it was.”

The lalafell smiles at her over his cup. It had taken her a long time, and a lot of inquiries, and a fair share of bribery to secure a meeting with the Master of the Azzraneth Ossuary. They sit now at a small table tucked away in the hall, sheltered by books and candle light.

“So what is it that I have to do?” Lieal asks. She remembers the smell of decay and the ash on her skin. Her stomach churns.

“You ask them what they want, of course.”

“And how do I do that?”

Master Cocobuki’s smile turns into a grin. “It’s going to cost you.”

Lieal almost laughs. “What doesn’t, in this city?”

.

.

He gives her herbs to crush into her milk before she sleeps. “We never dream of things we have not seen before. Whoever it is, wherever you are, you have known them before.”

The doors before her loom tall and crimson and she runs her fingers over the wood, which is suddenly charred under her hand. She is experiencing a lucid dream - it no longer controls _her_ , at least not entirely. She finally has her own agency in this dream Ishgard and she takes it to her full advantage before the voice, like always, calls out her name.

She tries to remember when she had been here before in the waking world, who this home once belonged to. It is on the tip of her tongue, at the edges of her consciousness. And with it comes the fear, the childish urge to crawl under her blankets and press skin-to-skin alongside Ettie’s body in secret and giggle away the terror of ghosts. Her soul remembers this house and its owners and it tells her to flee.

There is nowhere to go; not in this dream. She is her own in this sleep, but she is also the dead’s.

A voice calls her name. She turns. A girl stands there, pale haired with lips the color of roses.

 _(Blood,_ her soul corrects her. _The color of murderers is always blood._ )

“I remember you,” Lieal says, and the girl’s red lips smile, and Lieal screams herself awake.


	2. january 13, 2016 - two

She refuses to dream but sleep drags her under and Ishgard now comes like a crescendo of dark water that swallows her whole and  _drowns_.

The street. The mansion. The roses. Lieal blinks and suddenly it is all dead: the cobblestones frozen, the mansion charred and sunken in on itself, and the roses wilted and dry. She searches for an escape but where is there to run, in the realm of the dead?

A voice calls her name. Lieal refuses to turn. She shuts her eyes and pretends like a child that the ghoul watching her back will disappear as soon as she counts to  _one—two—three—_

The voice laughs. “Really? After all the effort we put into getting us here?”

It approaches closer and Lieal knows this because the air is suddenly all ash and smoke burns at the inside of her throat, into her lungs and low in her belly. She breathes it in and chokes out decay.

“Do you remember me?” The ghost asks. “You were only a child when I died, so perhaps not. But you know  _of_ me.” It is nearly upon her and the smile in its voice sends shivers down Lieal’s spine. She tries to move her feet, tries to  _run_ , but all that happens is her heartbeat in her ears is suddenly a loud beating drum and the ghost is standing before her.

A hand – soft and frozen – tilts her chin. “You can open your eyes now,” the voice haunting her dreams coos and it is not a request. It is an order, and in the world of the dead, it is they who hold all the power.  

Pale skin and pale hair. Red lips and dark eyes framed by even darker lashes. Lieal trembles under the girl’s gaze.

“What do you want with me?” She tries to be brave, she truly does, but she remembersthis girl when she was alive, all the way until the day her family’s mansion burned and swallowed their bodies and screams whole. And this girl standing at the front of it all, clutching the hand of her bawling sister: with an inferno in her eyes and ash in her hair, snarling at the Knights and nobles suffocating them. Like a wildling. Like a monster.  

The girl traces a finger down the side of Lieal’s face. “What do I want with you? What do  _you_ want with  _me_? This goes both ways, little moon girl.” She drops her hand and Lieal breathes a sigh of relief – short lived – and suddenly they are standing elsewhere, Ishgard disappearing around them like vapor. Coerthas in the summer: brilliantly green with windmills in the distance and the fields around them bright with flowers. Lieal’s breath catches in her throat. She had almost forgotten how beautiful it had looked.

“Ah,” the ghost says, as if she now knows something she had not before. “Is this why? Most interesting that it would be someone like  _you_ who would start digging for bones. Nymeia must be laughing herself silly right now.”

The beauty of this world disappears. A mansion, which no longer exists, sits atop a small hill of flowers, which also no longer exists. The Vaifert Flower Mansion: a summer house belonging to the family, open to the public each Spring and Summer seasons. A small fee into their coffers, once upon a very long time ago, allowed you entry to their sprawling gardens to enjoy and wander at your own leisure. Posted Knights guarded the borders edging into the woodlands; young couples would disappear among the vivid colors and scents; children would run free, allowed this one moment of liberty away from the city.

The world shifts again and they stand inside, surrounded by expensive things and the laughter of dead nobility. Reality tilts and it is all lost to the passage of time and deterioration. The foundations of the mansion sit atop a small hill of frozen ground with nothing but the moan of wind to keep company. The ghost moves to perch on the charred remains of a staircase and settles down on it like a Queen.

 _A Queen of nothing_ , Lieal thinks.

Solette Vaifert smiles and pats the space next to her. “Come sit, little servant girl.”


	3. january 24, 2016

Lieal does as she is bid because - by Halone, by all the Twelve - _what else is she to do?_

“Once upon a time ago,” begins Solette Vaifert, suspected of arson and murder to her entire family but never proven guilty, “I found my loving, charming father smuggling little girls and boys into this basement right below us. I watched him receive gil for it and he had snarled so horribly, so like a _monster_ , that I could not conceive that the father who treasured myself and Adelaide so could be the same man I was now watching from the shadows.” With a grin, she reaches over and clasps one of Lieal’s hands in hers - so cold, and so young, only fifteen summers when she had disappeared. 

Lieal shivers under the touch and stares at the dream sky.

“Why are you telling me this?” She questions and then winces as Solette’s grip tightens, sharp nails digging into the soft skin of Lieal’s palm.

“Because,” the dead noble girl replies and moves her fingers up the length of Lieal’s forearm, to her shoulder, until she is digging into the tender underside of her jaw. She twists Lieal’s chin to face her and this close the Miqo’te can make out the lack of veins on the ghost’s face, the absence of colour on her cheeks - just the grey eyes as an abyss and the small lips, red with all the colour the rest of her does not have. “You are digging up my grave, orphan girl, _stolen girl–_ ” the mouth twists just so and Lieal remembers her in front of the mansion, that passion on her face silhouetted by the screams of the dying. “ _–_ and I want revenge against the man whose blood dares flow in my veins, in Addie’s, tainting us both. The one man whom I failed to kill, whom the fire didn’t swallow as it should have - I want him found, and cut apart piece by piece, and so do _you_.”

She lets go and Lieal sits like a stone, her skin numb with the force and the chill of Solette’s grip. “You’ve hit a dead end, haven’t you? That is why you’re here. Why you were calling me. Because Nymeia saw fit to entwine us and I shall help you, and you shall help me.”

Lieal finds her words and they come falling out too fast, all together: “You murdered them all _–_ the Church was right to try and brand you a heretic, a murderer _–_ _how could you even do such a thing–_ ”

Solette scoffs and jolts up from the staircase, a portrait of anger. “I killed them all because they all _knew_. I sold my soul to demons so that Adelaide could be safe– and I succeeded, mind you, servant girl–” she whirls and is in Lieal’s face again, spitting fire with every syllable. “The Church could not touch me, and they will not for my blood goes back farther than those pointy eared bastards would like it to - my ancestors slew dragons - they were merchant kings and queens who brought profit to the city _–_ ” and she laughs abruptly like she has been holding it in for every second, of every minute of the last ten years that have passed since she had disappeared from Church’s safe house. “My family raised orphanages and fed the hungry and oh, the irony just _kills_ , don’t you think?”

The world of the dead is silent around them, quieter than any graveyard, quieter than any tomb. “You will help me,” Solette says once she has calmed. Lieal refuses to meet her eyes and can still feel the piercing stare burning a hole into her soul. She wets her lips and thinks of all the children that must be frightened, crying and alone, wanting for their families; just like she had been, so very long ago.

“You will help me?” The tremble in her voice shames her. She sets her jaw and forces herself to look into the eyes of the dead noble. “How?”

The smile that spills across Solette’s face is brilliant, as blinding as the sun. And just as dangerous, ready to burn any who dare come too close. “Simple,” she purrs and in a flash stands before Lieal, her hair a pale veil over the two as she leans in close.

“All it takes is a drink… and for you, it as simple as falling asleep.” 

.

.

“A Fantasia?” Master Cocobuki asks, one hand on his chin. “I can procure one for you, yes. But you are aware of the consequences? You trust this spirit of yours so?”

Lieal is abuzz with nervous energy. “Yes,” she replies, lying through her teeth. “I do.”

The lalafell gives her one last, long look before disappearing into the halls of the Oussary. Lieal watches him go and thinks: _this is for the greater good._

.

.

“The greater good?” Bast’s voice is spitting venom as he paces the front of her apartment. “You would make a deal with a girl who, from my understanding, made a pact with voidsent to murder her entire family in exchange for her life? Tell me, Lieal, what greater good can come from this?”

She remains silent. The Seeker whirls around on his feet. “And you!” He directs this time to Ami, who sits at the the girl’s side. “You are alright with this? Truly?”

Ami offers no response. Beside him, Lieal’s shoulders hunch further into herself. “No,” she speaks for him at last. “He is not. But he cannot stop me, and neither can you, Bast. I must do this. Forgive me.”

Bastien snarls. “You are both fools. I cannot watch this go down.”

He is gone before the door can even click shut behind him. Lieal traces patterns in the fabric of her skirt. There is a shift in the air beside her; the barest hint of Ami’s large hand caressing her hair and then he too is gone.

.

.

She is a coward: there is a letter delivered to her previous Mistress’ chambers the next day. It does not tell the truth. Aliette will never know the truth, and Lieal is glad for it.

.

.

The potion is bitter and burns her throat on its way down. She closes her eyes, and for the greater good, she sleeps.

.

.

Warmth at her fingertips. One moment she is not alive and the next one she is - she lurches and gasps for air like she has been dunked in the frozen ocean. The light hurts her eyes. The colours even more so. She tries to remember how to breathe.

The body does it for her - it has not been dead, not like she has. Not quite. She flexes her fingers and marvels at the muscles that jump between her wrist and the tip of her pinky. She feels her head for ears - no fur, good, she had harboured concerns over the exact outcome of this… _exchange._

She spies a mirror in the corner of the room and lunges for it; it takes several attempts to remember how to walk. The image that greets her is a familiar one: pale hair and pale skin, a small mouth and dark eyes. Hyur. She closes her eyes and dives deep into her aetheric core and _there_ \- she can feel the little servant girl slumbering, a flicker against the tides that are the new soul inhabiting her body.

Solette opens her eyes and smirks at the reflection. “Kindness,” she murmurs through lips quickly remembering how to speak, “is _always_ a weakness.”


	4. january 12, 2016 - solette interlude

Flowers in her hair and peals of laughter; the dirt between her toes and the scratching of a quill against parchment. Soft silks against her soft skin and her father’s soft touch, a caress against her ashen hair. Her sister’s smile and innocent eyes. A winter like no other. Whispers of how commoner children sometimes disappear from the Vaifert summer estate; how they must have gotten too close to the woods, snatched up by bandits hungry for coin or dragons hungry for revenge. The dark of night and footsteps in the hallway, muffled noise too human to be anything else. All it takes is one spark of curiosity and there’s a door in the cellar and a man who hands her father a purse full of coins. Her father: his mouth crooked and lines on his face. There’s blood on his hand and he shakes it in the stranger’s face and says, _the brat bit me. Make sure you whip him real good._

Her father’s caress on her hair and his hand on Adelaide’s cheek. In her nightmares her father comes now, a jeer on his lips as her forces her down to her knees. _She knows what happens to the children that go missing, to the little boys and girls who never see their parents again_. Adelaide runs circles in her dreams, a youthful sprite bursting to the seams with her innocence. Sometimes she wonders if she imagines the look in her father’s eyes when he stares at them.

Her mother knows. Her uncles know. Their lips pinch into dismissive frowns and she runs away, far away until someone finally listens. A dusty book in the library whispers to her, warms her hands when she touches the spine. The heat is all encompassing and she trades all she has when a question is asked of her: _for the sake of your sister, what will you do?_

_I’ll burn,_ she answers back. _I’ll be a raging inferno that scalds the blind and the ignorant, the willing and the helping. I will bring forth the judgement of Halone unto them, the guilty and the sinners_.

So she burns until nothing but ash is left, until nothing but her and hers alone remain; until a hole inside of her tears and something settles into the crevices of her soul, crooning with vengeance.


	5. may 23, 2017

Solette dreams of waking in a field of flowers.

“Good morning,” the soul that is not her own says. “Or is it good evening? I’m not quite certain.”

Above her, haloed by the sun, the bright face of the miqo'te servant girl smiles.

.

.

“Gridania?” Solette scoffs. Stray petals cling to her clothes like stubborn rainwater and she flicks them off. Her fingers come away coated with pollen and heady with scent; scowling, the woman rubs them against the leather of her pants. The air is vibrant with the scent of spring.

Lieal hums out an answer low in her throat. “It is my dreamscape,” she points out. A yawn breaks past her lips and, locking her fingers before her, she stretches them high above her head. “Strange. One would think I would not be so tired, considering we are already asleep.”

A warm breeze brushes through the meadow like a soft kiss against their skin. Lieal’s lips are full with her smile; beside her, Solette’s mouth tugs ever downwards.

The sun that is the miqo'te girl refuses to be dimmed by the shadow cast upon her. She stretches her hands heavensward, radiant like a pulsating star. Her happy sigh echoes around them.

“You’re awfully cheery for someone dead,” Solette snaps. A ball of anxiety croons deep in the pit of her stomach with every passing second: the flowers smell too much like the home-that-no-longer-is. She almost imagines she can see her mother, cradling her roses gently in the palms of her hands, were she to turn her head. Adelaide’s girlish laughter passes through the dream like ghosts.

“Not dead,” Lieal corrects her. “Just sleeping, remember?” Her gentle smile hurts, Solette thinks.

“There are no ghosts here,” the girl continues and the blue of her eyes is like the expansive dream sky above them.

“Just us: the living and the tragic.”

.

.

There is silence between them that is broken only by fragments of a song Lieal sings under her breath. Birdsong croons far in the distance; the sun cradles them with its light like a loving embrace.

“I do believe I prefer you frightened of me,” Solette says at last, if only to break the quiet. She does not fight the dream: here, she knows she belongs to the girl whose existence she stole.

Lieal turns her eyes towards the woman, larger than usual with her surprise. “Really? I could never be frightened of you… not now that I have seen your soul, Solette.”

Solette’s heart beats rapid-fire fast against the bones and flesh of her chest. It is the first time she has heard her name in years, she realizes. “Whatever is that supposed to mean? What happened to–” and here she mimicks the girl’s voice, “–"you murdered them all, how could you?”“

Lieal’s ears flatten against her hair for a moment before straightening again. “That is true,” she admits and her voice is quiet, just like the breeze and the birdsong. The dream is a reflection of the girl. “But someone who has sacrificed so much for the sake of her sister… how could I ever fear you, when I now see how much love there is within you?”

Solette’s reply is a snarl. “Do not dare to assume you know me,” she says. Her anger is palpable in the air, in the way the particles around her crackle with the traces of thunder. Lieal merely laughs.

“But I do know you.” The smile she sends the older woman is tender but all Solette can imagine seeing is the knife buried under it, ready to burrow itself into her back.

“Stop lying!” She demands. There is no use in trying to overpower the girl here but oh, how Solette wants to place her hands around the servant’s neck and throttle the life right out of her. Her fingers burn with restrained spells surging under her skin.

“I do not lie,” Lieal replies. The birdsong around them croons, and a lone cloud bobs in the sky like a paper ship. “Not in here, where we cannot lie even if we wished for it.”

The birdsong reaches a fever pitch. “To love,” Lieal murmurs, eyes trained on the sun, “is to suffer the greatest pain of all.”

The birds echo her words and Solette is surrounded by it: Adelaide, her mother, Adelaide, Adelaide.

“Stop it,” she whispers before she even realizes it. “Stop this madness.”

The pale form of the Miqo'te lounges in the flowers, her small shoulders collapsing in a shrug. “This is my dreamscape, but it is also yours.” A flower is in her hand, its petals lingering as if by a thin thread. Lieal brings it up to her mouth and blows: they hit Solette like bullet wounds and stain her clothes red, red, that red that she always painted her lips with as a girl in Ishgard and the red she painted her screaming family with and the red she sees every time she thinks of her father.

“I wish you peace,” Lieal whispers and Solette is falling–

Falling–

“And prosperity.”

Solette wakes with flower petals on her skin.

.

.

“The dead are trying to speak to you,” Master Cocobuki tells her.

“I am the dead!” Solette growls.

“Oh, I know.” The lalafellin master of the ossuary takes a languid sip of his tea. “I can feel it rolling off of you in waves, that pungent smell of death.” He wrinkles his nose. “Very well, I shall correct myself. Your personal ghost is trying to speak to you.”

The woman’s pretty face twists into a scowl. “And she is rather successful at it, too. How do I stop her?”

Master Cocobuki eyes her like she is some stubborn, ignorant child. “My dear girl,” he says after several moments. “You don’t. Your soul and hers are now one, for all accounts and purposes. You can’t choose to silence one aspect of your soul and keep the others.”

Solette stares at him. “This is, frankly speaking, bullshit.”

“No, Miss Vaifert.” Over his tea, the lalafell narrows his eyes at her. “This is life. Life, which you have already perverted with your existence. The laws of nature will only allow you to go so far.”

.

.

Sometimes when she wakes, she feels as if she behind a glass wall observing the world around her.

Sometimes when she wakes, she feels the sunlight of that flower meadow and hears the Miqo'te girl’s laughter.

Sometimes, when she wakes and is in that half-awake state of existence, she knows her body is for the moment not her own and belongs instead to its original soul. She can feel the echo of ears and tail, the bite of sharp fangs on her lip.

“Damn you!” She curses her other self in the dreams where they meet under the warmth and the heady flower scent. “May Halone take you with Her spear and drag you under, into the very bowels of the seventh Hell!”

The soul of Lieal Fhey merely listens and always, always, smiles. “For the greater good,” she tells the woman, “sacrifices must be made.”

Solette screams.

Solette wakes.

The cycle continues.


End file.
